2003-07-15 04:00:00 PDT Sandwich, England -- Welcome to Royal St. George's, where agronomy goes to die.

The 132nd Open Championship has come to a perfectly unspoiled patch of land in the southeast of England, full of fescue-rich dunes and fairways so hard and dry and baked, so bereft of lush grass, that you could dribble a basketball on them.

Take a walk through the wildflowers and grasses from the old stone clubhouse to the holes out by the water. There, the stiff breezes of the English Channel dominate. All you hear is wind in your ears; all you feel is the essence of the land, hard beneath your feet.

It's not a round of golf -- it's a seaside hike through Kent on a bright and breezy summer day in England.

"This is what golf is meant to be," said Scott Verplank, a Texan by birth. "It's not about teeing it high and bombing it; it's about keeping it close to the earth and taking what it gives you."

And with that, the American laid the groundwork for the week's theme.

Someone will win the British Open come Sunday night, and the man who does will have done so by playing golf on the ground, watching balls kick off of mounds and slopes to places for which he cannot plan, and by being tapped fortuitously by Lady Luck. If links golf is what the best in the world want when they come play golf's oldest championship, Royal St. George's is giving them links so unadulterated, you can squint your eyes, dream a little and imagine Harry Vardon stalking the swales in his 1899 victory here.

Such prattling isn't just the romantic waxings of an American traveler intoxicated by a foreign land. Although St. Andrews, Muirfield and Turnberry, the legendary tracks of Scotland, grab the imagination and are considered the finest of the Open rota, some of the keener Brits consider Royal St. George's an underrated, worthy place. It's known around here only as "Sandwich," after the town that hosts this course, and it's beloved as the creation of a Scotsman named Dr. Laidlaw Purves, who searched the English coast in 1885 for a place to create a links to rival St. Andrews. Legend has it Purves climbed to the top of St. Clement's Church to survey the land, where Claudius landed in the year 43 A.D., and saw his place. Sandwich would be the site of a links course designed, mostly, by Mother Nature herself.

"I don't think they moved a speck of dirt in creating this place," American Scott McCarron said Monday, standing to the side of the 18th green. Nearby, Mark O'Meara practiced chipping from a so-called "collection area," left of the 18th green, where the green, like many others, takes a dramatic dip and kicks balls down into the native grasses. Up the 18th fairway, brown grasses mix with yellows and patches of green. In America, it would be considered a dog track, a baked-out waste of land.

At the British Open, these conditions are as good as it gets.

The great British golf writer Bernard Darwin wrote: "This is as nearly to my idea of heaven as is to be attained on any earthly links."

In the Times of London, writer Christopher Martin-Jenkins, a member at Sandwich, wrote of an evening when he played alone and noticed as the sun set that he was far from the clubhouse. He needed to get back, for fear of being lost amid the dunes. "I set off in haste for what I hoped was a tee, preferably the 18th, but any tee would do to get my bearings. I approached the top of the grassy hillock, but it was just that, and nothing else. Not only could I not spot a tee, but even locating a fairway seemed impossible."

He eventually made it to safety, but noted that "the most characteristic feature of Sandwich is its very featurelessness."

The players say they will hit to the tilted and dipping fairways and hope for a kick. Most likely, they will get a strange kick, and often find their ball in the first cut of rough, which is more a small bit of weeds than anything else, something they all say is playable. "The statistic of fairways hit," McCarron said, "is going to take a big-time hit this week."

The players say they just have to plan for landing the ball short and running it up to those dry, crusted greens, then hope for more good fortune on greens that feature dramatic dips and angles, scuttling every notion you ever had of a traditional putting surface.

"It's the way it's supposed to be," Bjorn said. "Play it on the ground, and take the good with the bad."

All over Royal St. George's, the buzz of Open week crept in. Tiger Woods played early with the young star Charles Howell III, as he had done on Sunday, too. ("The mounds on the fairways are the most severe I've ever seen," Woods said.)

Later, Howell moved to the practice chipping area, working on his bump-and- run game from off the green. He's going to need it. So will everyone else, along with a nice dollop of serendipity, hard by the English Channel.

2003 British Open Royal St. Geroge's
SANDWICH, ENGLAND JULY 17-20
For the first time since 1999, Tiger Woods doesn't have any of the Grand
Slam trophies on his mantel. He has said all year his game has been close, and
it's a matter of seeing a few putts fall. A victory would allow him to join
Jack Nicklaus as the only players to win the career Grand Slam at least two
times over.
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TV schedule First and second round coverage (all times Eastern) July 17-18,
7 a.m. to 7 p.m., (TNT)
Third round coverage July 19, 7 a.m. to 9 a.m., (TNT); 9 a.m. to 2:30 p.m.,
(ABC) Fourth round coverage July 20, 6 a.m. to 8 a.m., (TNT); 8 a.m. to 1:
30 p.m., (ABC)
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Length 7,106 yards
Par 36-35-71
Format 72 holes, stroke play
Playoff Four holes, stroke play
Purse $6.24 million (3.9 million pounds)
Winner's share $1.12 million (700,000 pounds)
Defending champion Ernie Els
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Sources: PGA, Associated Press
Associated Press Graphic